a full children's unit

children enjoying the late autumn afternoon sun 

we start this blog post with some great news.....for the first time since we had the unit extended by the students from stuttgart university we have a full unit!

over the last month we have had five new admissions who join children who have been with us for some time, however whilst we are so pleased to be able to provide a stable home to these children the news of any new admission is always tinged with sadness as every child who is placed with us arrives with a story of suffering and pain. unfortunately this is so true of the three children who we have been able to help this week.

as per normal we can't go into each of their individual cases but please pray for us as we seek to provide a safe home for three little ones who have had a very troubled life so far and also their family who are obviously struggling to support them at home. we hope to be able to sort something quickly with our social workers but as always things don't always follow a quick path.

April News

Well, the Children’s Unit has truly been transformed at the hands of the Stuttgart University team. We now have a unit which is big enough to accommodate 15 children, a new kitchen, beautiful spacious day room space as well as a refitted bathroom and much needed treatment room. Although the team achieved a lot in a short space of time they had to leave before much of the final finishing could be done so we have been hard at work trying to maintain momentum in the hope that we can move the children in by the end of the month. It seems a long way off with still such a long snag list to complete but we are thankful that the team left some more funding to assist with this and we have been able to hire a very competent builder to assist.


We have been making the most of having our volunteers too and Shannon and the Littler Family have certainly put in the elbow grease to get the wooden floors looking super shiny! We are so thankful to the Stuttgart students who worked so hard for so long to get as much done as they could and we cannot wait to move in and be able to start filling the rooms up with children!

On top of the new children’s unit we also have some, much needed office space and meeting rooms and our short-term volunteer accommodation (Ukuqala II) which was started by last year’s team is also complete.

With all this change happening we’ve got reduced numbers of children staying with us until we have more space. Although this has been strange – we currently only have 4 children! – it has meant that each of them has been able to receive a lot more 1:1 attention from our house moms. We have really noticed an acceleration in their development, especially in the areas that they were struggling. Now one little girl can walk, a little boy can talk and the other boy and girl have increased a lot in confidence! It is very exciting to see.

Sports

The past month has seen another one of our famous Soccer Saturdays come and go. These days are always a tremendous amount of work but we know how worthwhile they are for the children who attend our weekly sports clubs. 180 children attended and had great fun.

We have also been able to bless all of our sports mentors with a new pair of trainers thanks to our lovely friend from the USA, Helen! Having the right ‘kit’ helps these dedicated guys feel appreciated and also makes it easier for them to do their jobs. Thanks Helen!

The sports mentors continue to develop into upstanding young men and women. We are so proud of them. They have really taken up the challenge and recognise their responsibility. They are a fantastic influence on the children they teach. Please keep these young people in your prayers as they lead their generation forward in this difficult and sometimes disheartening environment.

Other News:
Volunteers -
This month we said goodbye to Jacqui who has served us for the past 6 months here at Village of Hope. She has gone back to Australia and was a great help with our Rainbow Smiles HIV support group for adolescents. We wish her all the best for her next venture.

We were also very happy to say hello to the Littler family, who we mentioned earlier. David, Suzanne, Joel, Toby and Zach are friends of ours from our church back in the UK and were the guinea pigs of the new volunteer accommodation in Ukuqala II! They visited for two weeks and were a breath of fresh air and fun. They also provided us with a long snag list of things we need to sort in the new accommodation! ;-)

Fundraisers-
Congratulations to Andy Gilbert and Dave Bambury who completed the Reading Half marathon in 1h58 – most impressive! They also raised £500 for us. Thanks guys!

On top of his sporting prowess, Andy also organised a very successful music and comedy revue in Aylesbury . Long time friend of Thembalitsha and singer/songwriter, John Zealey and his band performed an electric and acoustic ser. He was also selling his latest CD with all monies going to Thembalitsha. Between John’s performances award-winning stand-up Andy Kind did a set which was well received.  Andy was also selling his book at a discounted rate. £750 was generated for Thembalitsh UK so thank you to all who were involved.

Cycle To The Sea | Date Set for September 2013 - 
We are going large with our Cycle to the Sea event this year! We will be running an event in UK and South Africa on the same day! Exciting stuff!! The date is set for 14th September so please keep your eyes peeled on the Thembalitsha facebook page for more details as our plans develop.

How You Can Help
We are never short of ideas on how you can help us out!!!!
• Become a regular monthly giver - Regular givers are like gold dust to us!!!
• Fundraise – Commit to shave your head, host a quiz night, do a sporting event!!!!! – The possibilities are endless and can raise R10000s with enough enthusiasm!
• Pray – need we say more?!

For more information contact us fundraiser@thembalitsha.org.za


Volunteering
We rely heavily on committed volunteers to do the stuff here in South Africa. It can be a fantastic way to give (and receive!) However, we do have some criteria you have to meet in order to apply. For more information on volunteering for Thembalitsha please check out our website or email us at volunteer@thembalitsha.org.za

Also, please do NOT book ANY flights before your application form has been accepted. Thank you!

a quick catch up!

ukuqala3 richtfest lead by heinz wolf 

firstly i am really sorry about the awful layout of this post, i have been playing around with the photos and text for ages and this is the best that blogger can do at the moment!

so much is happening at the moment, which i am sure you can imagine with 28 students and their tutors from stuttgart who are completing the amazing changes to the buildings here at the village of hope but we have also been joined by our new dutch sports student and we have received some very special gifts which are making a difference to both the lives of the children who live with us and those who we help in the community. what follows is a very short catch up on all that is happening, complete with photos to give some visual perspective!

phillip aka roger visits from switzerland,
with friend (chris)

we have received visits from some amazing people, not only did phillip, commonly known as roger federer, who was one of our first volunteers over 4 and a half years ago, come and visit us he also got involved in our sports outreach where we were able to use 40 of the 100 small footballs which were donated by travelstart.

rodnights visit
(complete with german underpants!)

visits from pop stars!

maz received a visit from 3 children that she used to work with when she was a classroom support in england and some friends who we met last year, via my parents, came to visit from sweden, two members from the amazing 'wholehearted' band came to visit to chat around how they can get further involved in our projects here in grabouw they were swamped by our house moms who revere these people as true hero's (think the boot might be on the other foot if truth be told!!!)....yes it has been a busy time.

the new rocking horse
...thanks matt and katt!

matt and katt donated a wonderful outside rocking horse in memory of assi and the children have been enjoying riding that for the first time this week, thanks guys it is a real hit with the children and its hard to keep the house moms off of it too!

following the departure of yoram and annemiek we have been running short of support at our sports outreach, however this week we have been joined by eric, our latest student from the HAN university in holland who will be with us for the next five months, you might be able to see his tall frame in one of the photos!

the ukuqala2 house gets plastered!

kids playing with new footballs and
eric the new HAN student

and last but not least not only have the building works moved on at a pace but we held our very own ukuqala3 richtfest, read more around this german tradition here, which celebrated the completion of the roof section of the new children's bedrooms. the toilets at ukuqala2 are coming along well and the walls inside the main ukuqala2 building are receiving their sand, lime and straw rendering so we will soon be able lay the floor and fit the kitchen in readiness for our first family of volunteers!

me and maz sharing at the richtfest...
(i know the socks!)

i think that's it for the mo, sorry there are so many stories in one post but i think that gives you a flavour of the things that are going on at the moment.

first person to sit in the ukuqala2 toilet!

times they are a changing!

new bedrooms on the back of the childrens unit

taking down the bedrooms which the vineyard team
constructed over 4 years ago!

the architectural team from stuggart, along with their trusted and adopted student, dave knight from england, are making a real impression on all three projects at the village of hope.

saul and nigels bathroom is remodeled!

for those of you who have visited or stayed as a volunteer you will notice a huge difference which can be seen in the few photos which i have posted, the children have now moved into the 'old volunteer' kitchen/meeting room and the team have been busy converting the volunteer bedrooms into our new office space with new entrance/reception area, but the main changes can be seen in the children's unit where the new bedrooms are taking shape and the kitchen and bathrooms have been ripped out to create some extra space for the additional work that we are planning at the village of hope.

our new morning meeting space

the long term team at the village of hope have also had to find a new meeting place and this morning we joined together on the stoop of ukuqalaI to pray around the and plan for the challenges we might face during the day.

german students enjoying a game of netball

it is quite sad to see some of the hard work that has been undertaken by some of our volunteers over the last few years being taken apart but we know that there is a bigger plan and we are excited to see how the new space will be used to enhance the work we are doing both with the children that we are called to help, as well as providing better work space for our long term team and volunteer experience.

we have tried to engage the ukuqala3 team in the work we are doing in the community and it is our desire that each member of the team is able to join us at our sports outreach in the different areas around the town, as you can see some of the team have enjoyed playing netball and even a version of 'duck duck goose' with shannon our longer term volunteer.

duck duck goose with shannon!

please visit the ukuqala web page to keep up to date with the work that is going on this year by clicking on this link and if you would like to see some of the work that the ukuqala2 team undertook last year then please visit their youtube pages here.

ukuqala3 arrive with a passion to build together...

starting the works last week

this morning saw the arrival of the full team from the university of stuttgart who will be spending the next six weeks at the village of hope creating the third phase of the ukuqala project and unlike the previous ukuqala teams the ukuqala3 team will not just be focusing their attention on one area of the village of hope, this year it is their plan to bless us in three different ways.

the first will focus on completing the ukuqala2 building which needs to have it's outer coat of lime and clay applied, thus ensuring it is waterproof and able to take our first lot of volunteers in what will be our short term mission team accommodation.

the ukuqala3 team arrive!

they will also be building an ablution centre which will be made up of three separate buildings, a toilet block, a building for showering and also a wash room with sinks and washing machines, this will be positioned near to the ukuqala2 building thus enabling us to provide facilities to our short term volunteers.

filling and leveling the site

however the main focus of their time will be around extending our current children's unit, building a new straw bale constructed bedroom block which will enable us to host more children, provide them with a bigger kitchen and bathroom as well as creating a new entrance and office space. all of the above will mean that the current long term volunteers will move out of that space and share the following six weeks with myself and maz in our home.

david knight from southcourt baptist church is helping the team, his building skills and knowledge have already been seen to provide great insight and we pray that his time with will be both productive and satisfying.

long and short term volunteers join the walkers house

we will include the students in all aspects of the work we are doing in grabouw, they will have the opportunity of joining our outpatient careworkers in the community as they visit the sick in their small homes and the sports outreach and rainbow smiles clubs will be blessed with their input which we hope will provide them with an opportunity to see how other people live and who the legacy of their building works will benefit in the future.

all in all we know that it's all going to be a crazy time, the german team will have to learn to work in africa and realise that things move on a little slower over here, not that i have learnt that very well but that is the reality of it, our team will have to move around and have their space invaded, but we are so blessed to have them around and we thank God for sending them to us to enable us to serve our community better.

for more info on the ukuqala project please click on this link.

the village continues to bring ho ho hope!

santa and his sleigh before we left the village of hope

it has been another amazing year here at the village of hope, we continue to see God's provision to us as we seek to serve the community of grabouw especially focusing on those infected or affected by HIV, AIDS and TB, all of which are rife in our town.

we could spend a whole blog post about the wonderful things that have happened this year, all the stories of the children that we have helped to find a stable family to go home to live with or those that we are still seeking to help via our children's unit, we could talk about the provision of a new building provided by the students from stuttgart university or the people carrier bought with funds from our friends in england and the dutch charity 'wings of support'. we could provide a long update on the sports outreach which has grown from strength to strength, now engaging with more local mentors who have been supported by the students from the HAN university in holland but all that would take such a long time, so we urge you to venture through the previous posts on the blog to find out what we have been up to during 2012.

children excited to see santa coming to their street

however what we would like to share is the fact that our incredible team of permanent staff (our house moms and maintenance team) and our willing band of volunteers, both longer termers, short term mission teams and individuals, have continued to offer hope in what can sometimes be seen as hopeless situations and this culminated in our annual sleigh ride into the areas where we work day in day out.

it was great to see the children and members of their families that we work with enjoying the sight of father christmas being towed through the town, up the main street and then into each of the communities, many of whom live in little wooden shacks with no water or electricity. the whole community seemed to be out on the street and although we did bless them with a few sweets and apples that wasn't the reason we run this event.

kids chasing santa and his sleigh 

the main reason to do this again was to bless them with the chance to see santa coming to their streets and for that to provide another sign of hope as we celebrate the most amazing story of hope, that of a little baby coming to earth to show us how to live, to love one another, our neighbours and even our enemies, as we love ourselves, to look after the widows and the orphans and proclaim the good news that he can provide hope in the most hopeless places. thank God for Jesus and we thank him for inspiring us to do what we do each and everyday here in this little town in south africa.

happy christmas and may you see hope in 2013 as we enter another year of opportunity to serve those less fortunate than ourselves......

a flying visit....

we always love to welcome people to visit our various thembalitsha projects around the western cape, be it for a few days, a couple of weeks or even a longer term placement however we don't have many people who come for just a couple of hours but on monday it was my pleasure to be able to show brendon around two of our projects, thembacare grabouw and the village of hope.

i love to take people to see the work we are involved with in our local community, many of you will know that the village of hope is much more than our 9 bed children's unit and that thembacare serve more than the 7 people that stay in their inpatient unit receiving hospice care from our amazing team.

our work extends far beyond those boundaries, like the 7 sports outreach clubs we run each and every weekday afternoon during school term, or the rainbow smiles support group which meets every friday, along with our home based palliative care team who visit over 450 patients in the community who are living with HIV...we even venture out into the local businesses providing HIV, TB and blood sugar testing via our mobile unit, which is pulled around by my dependable bakkie.

during brendons short visit to grabouw he was able to pick up some of the sights, sounds, feelings and cultures that make up our wonderful little town, he was able to visit some of the poorest of the poor whilst still seeing the hope that is being provided by the likes of thembalitsha through our outreach programmes.

please visit brendons blog post, entitled, 'postitive about cape apples', to read what he thought about his short time with us, obviously things aren't always what they seem but i think brendon has picked up on the key reasons we do what we do here in south africa, i hope you will be encouraged and also challenged by his post.

impressed with our dutch students, again!

angelique and marijn

since we started work at the village of hope we have always had a heart to enable people to take the step from their first world existence into the lives of the poor and needy third world which surrounds us here in south africa.

there hasn't been a day in the last three and a half years where our volunteer unit has been empty, in fact we have welcomed over 300 people on to the project, some have come on a visit and felt the call to return for the longer term, like rob and emily house, or mel kidd and tim berger, some have stayed for a night during a mission trip whilst others have volunteered for 3 to 6 months and we thank them all...you know who you are!

with the direct action that we have via our village of hope community work, sports outreach and rainbow smiles HIV support group, and our sister project thembacare grabouw with their seven bed inpatient unit and outpatient care work we are able to offer people a chance to work with some of the most sick and needy people in the world.

over the years our relationships have developed with international churches sending return mission teams back to us again and again, the infocus team who spent time with us last week are an example of such groups. we are  also bless to be able to provide practical opportunities for students to come and serve with us, this can be seen via our relationship with the university of stuttgart who have committed to a long term partnership with the village of hope and they have already blessed us with building two eco house under their ukuqala projects.

one of their power point slides

yesterday i was attended the latest presentations from the most recent group of students from the HAN university in holland, maz attended a presentation last week as well. last november me and maz were able to make a visit to their campus in nijmegen and their partnership with our local municipality encourages students to come and make a difference to non government and government projects in and around grabouw.

over this last few months we have worked with nutritional, physio and sports management students who serve with us at the village of hope.

the impact and input that the HAN students have at the village of hope is invaluable, over the years they have enabled us to set up policies and procedures to enable us to run an effective children's unit and in the wider community to develop our sports outreach programme with written documents to help stimulate and engage new ideas on health and life style awareness to the 200 or so children that we work with each and every term time afternoon.

the latest sports students (angelique and marijn) have been working on their thesis which will help us evaluate the effectiveness's of the sports outreach programme, capturing data to see what impact, if any, our weekly clubs have on the behaviour, social awareness and self esteem of the children we work with to ensure we are not wasting time providing something that is having no tangible impact.

at the moment i am busy reading through their thesis, evaluating their findings which compared 100 children who attend our clubs against 100 who don't, i will then have to see how we will implement their suggestions for us to be more effective both in the use of local resource, our time and planning for the future!

this team of students have excelled themselves in helping us to serve our community, even the guys who are part of other disciplines have helped out with some of our sports clubs and we are really going to miss them when they return home next week.

we want to thank the HAN university for their willingness to partner with the thembalitsha foundation through the village of hope and we want to especially thank the students who are a real God sent as we seek to impact the lives of some of the most vulnerable children in the world.

topping out...or the richtfest

ground floor walls completed

it seems that we go from the sublime to the ridiculous here at the village of hope, our last post contained the info about how we provided some very basic care for a couple of families that had lost everything in a fire that destroyed their home and possessions in one of our informal settlements in grabouw and today i am posting a blog about the wonderful party we had to celebrate the hard work of our stuttgart students as they close on to the completion of our second building that will host our international volunteers.......

richtfest (topping out)

...everything is connected as we wouldn't be able to provide the help to the community without our volunteers and we are so thankful to them and to the amazing german students who have been working so hard to not only build but also provide the design and concept of our new building but sometimes your brain struggles to come to terms with the two worlds in which we seem to live.

the richfest party

however that's the conundrum we live with everyday and we have to deal with that...what we wanted to share with you the wonderful evening and traditional ceremony that we had last night with the students as they performed the 'topping out' or what they call the richtfest of the new building. this is richtfest is only completed once the roof is finished and they have worked hard very hard each and everyday, performing taxing building skills with little knowledge or experience, and having to contend with the warm (if not hot) summer sun to enable that to happen this week.

we had a great time, listening to their speeches, which were set to rhyme in both german and english and we enjoyed a braai and some beer together....with less than two weeks to go before they leave this was a good time to reflect on all that has already been achieved (i am sure the photos show some amazing progress) and gives them renewed energy for the final push.

thanks guys, we truly love, respect and commend all that you are doing to further the work of the village of hope and the wider thembalitsha foundation here in grabouw and south africa.

the stuttgart team are coming again

german newspaper article

this coming weekend we are going to be joined by the first 3 students from this years ukuqala project. these students from stuttgart university will be following in the footsteps of the previous group who built us a wonderful home this time last year. have a look at this newspaper article which appears on their website which picks up on the work that they did last year.

be assured that we will keep you informed of the progress of the new building which the rest of the team, who arrive during the middle of february, will build for us.

walkers update III (wholehearted tour news)

well another week has flown by with our week long trip to germany and holland now over we are focusing all our attention towards to wholehearted tour which kicks off tomorrow evening in taunton, with further events in bath on wednesday, aylesbury on thursday on what is world AIDS day, and then a weekend in london starting in hammersmith on friday and finishing with 4 events with the everynation chruches on sunday....for further info the please visit the wholehearted facebook page or the wholehearted blog which they will be keeping updated with stories of their trip......but that is all to come, what follows is a short recap of what we got up to last week.

the ukuqulaII students

on monday morning we got up for the early flight to stuttgart where we had a short meeting with leslie, the project manager from the ukuqula I project, and then we had a three hour presentation by the students who will be working on the ukuqala II project. it was wonderful to meet these 25 students who have not only spent time looking at the 2012 project but also the long term development of the village of hope in the future.

in the evening we met up for a meal with the students who built the first ukuqula home in feb/march of this year, words cannot express how much their time and commintment to build us an amazing ecco house is appreciated and they will always be held up high in the stories of the village of hope.

some of our ex-HAN students
at the pancake house!

tuesday was another early start to make the hour long flight from stuttgart to dusseldrof where we were met by an ex HAN student, elsie and her father, we enjoyed an evening of football and food with them at their home just outside bemmel.

on wednesday we met up with the international department of the HAN (highschool arnhem and nijmegen) and their tutors to discuss the work that their sports, pyhsio and social work can do as they partner with our thembalitsha projects in grabouw, we also had a chance to speak to some of the students who will be joining us in early 2012, providing them with some cultural background to south africa and the types of things that they will be experiencing during their five months with us.

we were totally blessed by the amount of ex students that came to meet us at the 'pancake house' in nijmegen on wednesday evening where we took time to catch up with them and their progress since they left south africa, it was so good to see them all.

children at the emmaus school in arnhem

thursday morning was also an early start, no rest for the wicked they say!, where we had an oppertunity to share with 3 different classes of children at a school in arnhem, this went really well, they had some very good questions which followed a powerpoint where we showed them some photos of the work we do in grabouw.

gerrit spronk picked us up in arnhem and we enjoyed an afternoon in amersford before sharing with his home group in the evening. gerrit also drove us over 300kms on friday, taking us to meetings with an ex village of hope volunteer, leo, and then on to den hag to meet up with the dutch chefs who visited the village of hope with the culibus in 2010 and who are looking to set up a fundraising event in early 2012.

saturday was spent with eveline and bart in amsterdam, a wonderful if not somewhat 'hippy' city, before flying back to england during the evening to stay for two nights with josh's (our middle son) girlfriends  (haddy) parents paul and lindy who made us feel very welcome after such a long trip.

heres to a wholehearted coming week!

arron and tyler start the plastering

arron and tyler getting plastered.

after a succesful test patch we are now confident that the lime, sand and straw plaster mix is ready to be applied to the inside of the new house built by the team from stuttgart university earlier this year.

arron and tyler are now busy getting their hands dirty and applying the mix onto the straw walls. this might take some time, but we hope that once this is completed we will be able to re install the kitchen and then start moving rob and emily (our long term volunteers) into their new home. thus freeing up space in the short term volunteers accommodation.

new village of hope accommodation video

we were so blessed to have the team from stuttgart university come not only to build but to fund and design the new accommodation here at the village of hope. the team kept a record of the progress of the building and have produced a short one minute 30 second video to show how the house literally came up out of the ground.

please visit a link to the video by clicking here, you will see our little jack russel, bruno, makes a brief appearance as well....i miss that little dog so much!

wanderers return

tim and maz have arrived back at the village of hope project after their short holiday in europe where they enjoyed catching up with family, meeting their new grandson, eli, and visiting the ukuqala team in their university city of stuttgart in germany. thankfully they didn't eat any cucumber whilst they were away but it now seems that beansprouts were the things to avoid anyway!

they arrived back to find a busy village of hope, during their time away two girls from england, both called rebbecca, a young lady from the USA who is going to be working with thandi at thembacare and returning volunteer tyler had arrived. unfortunately one of our new little girls had been taken into hospital with TB meningitis and the team have been running around trying to care for her and her mother who is also very sick with AIDS.

the village of hope is also once again without internet, the phonelines were stolen at the end of last week so our updates and replies to emails will be limited (i am currently sitting at thembacare grabouw writing this short update!) please pray that this gets sorted soon so we can keep in contact with the outside world....it's good to be back!

thankful for the building



last of the team to leave the new house

today we say our sad goodbye's to the last of the ukuqala team from stuttgart university who have been building us an amazing home for our long term volunteers at the village of hope. the rest of the team have been leaving in dribs and drabs over the last few days and are now either back in germany or of on a long deserved touring holiday around south africa!

the guys who left today have been completing the finishing touches to the kitchen, tidying the house and outside area. the team have been such a blessing to us and we are very sad to see them go.

new house is zwelitsha informal settlement



whilst we have been received this wonderful home, planned, designed and funded (all but a few thousand pounds which we are still trying to find!) it's hard to keep in context the work that these guys have done for us and our volunteers, whilst literally thousands of people in grabouw and who live on our doorstep do so with virtually nothing, many call home a small wooden structure with a tin roof, with little access to running water, sanitation and no electricity.

we know that God has blessed us and we thank him for his provision however as we were going to our sports club at zwelitsha on tuesday afternoon i was somewhat surprised to see a new home that had been built in that location. the home had a pitched roof and steel windows, we trust that those people will also be happy with their new home and that God will also bless them as they move in.